A couple of months ago, I signed up to try Graze, a company who send out tasty fruit, nut and seed-based snacks, conveniently packaged into handy little packets that can be enjoyed throughout the day.

graze box

It’s a nice idea and appeals to those looking for a healthier, more interesting alternative to that mid-morning or afternoon chocolate break or even a replacement for lunch. Their website allows you to select which of their many contents you’re willing to try, would like to receive sometimes or would like to receive often as well as bin those you never want to be sent.

graze box contents

But graze has a couple of (pretty large) obstacles to overcome, the biggest of which is it’s dependence on our utterly shambolic and unreliable postal system. The boxes, which are designed to fit through a regular letterbox, are sent out by regular mail, and I’ve only received one out of the several I’ve ordered thus far on the date requested. Even with the switch to postal-strike withstanding no-fresh-fruit selections, this is less than ideal.

And for those thinking of grazing five days a week, the £2.99 per box quickly adds up to just under £15 a week.

I can confirm that all of these taste great, especially the dates and the walnuts. This is no mean feat given the very many occasions I’ve been disappointed by the taste, texture and condition of dried fruits and nuts.

As you may just be able to make out from the photos of my graze box, the graze pack weights vary from 25 to 60 grams depending on pack size and contents. I decide to aim for 50 gram portions for my home-made packs.

organic (pitted) dates, raisins, pistachios, walnuts and almonds

A quick trip to Lakeland supplies me with 10 little reusable boxes for less than 70 pence each. I get to work packing them with healthy, tasty goodies.

So how do my DIY boxes price out?

DIY graze boxes

The pitted dates come in a 375 gram bag, and I fit 50 grams into the box. That’s 7 boxes for £2.89.
The raisins also come in a 375 gram bag, and I fit 50 grams into the box. That’s 7 boxes for £1.75.
The almonds come in a 250 gram bag, and I fit 50 grams into the box. That’s 5 boxes for £2.99.
The walnuts come in a 200 gram bag, and I fit 40 grams into the box. That’s 5 boxes for £2.55.
The pistachios come in an 85 gram bag, and I fit 42 grams into the box. That’s 2 boxes for £3.49 (currently on offer at £2.79).

To my surprise, that averages out at about 63 pence per box (or £2.50 for four) though it’s skewed by the pistachios, and drops to 42 pence per box if I exclude those (£1.68 for four).

Of course, if price is the foremost concern, buying from Abel & Cole isn’t the only option. A quick internet search of supermarket sites reveals that I can buy 500 grams (non-organic) stoned dates for £1.25 and 500 grams of Californian raisins for £1.89 but that walnuts, almonds and pistachios are priced similarly to or just below the Abel & Cole bags for both non-organic and organic versions.

Clearly, graze prices aren’t quite as high as they may initially seem (although two out of four packs in their boxes are pretty small in size).

Again, looking to the supermarkets reveals that I can source a 150 gram bag of honey peanuts and cashews for £1.49

The other downside to my DIY approach is shelf-life and shelf-space. To achieve the variety available from graze, I need to have quite a few different bags on the go but, once open, the produce may not remain in tip top condition for very long. I need to be making quite a few boxes a week to make this worthwhile.

What a stellar idea! I always need to carry emergency snacks around with me, and as my recent spate of gluttony has left me in danger of developing gout, this is right up my street – you are brilliant Kavey 🙂

Nicely put Pro's and Con's to both sides.It has certainly made me think about spending some time preparing the days elevenses instead of popping into the nearest newsagent for a bar of chocolate and a bag of crisps every day.

Hello KavLooks very good, splendid for days out etc. It will be a great help for people like me (mild to moderate diabetics), who have to watch their sugar/carbohydrates/caloric intake, if there was a rough idea of total values of the content in each box. Is that possible?Mum

Mum, if the original bags have that kind of information, per 100 grams, then it would be easy to work it out. Otherwise, I do have a book that lists the averages for most foods, I could lend it to you!

Very interesting Kavey. It's nice to see photos of your diy boxes – they look so cute. Also it is good to see how the prices compare.

I'm loving my 'postal strike' graze boxes and will probably keep getting them cos they contain such delicious things. (I took one on the train journey to and from your anniversary do) But I will also head down to Lakeland Ltd to get some of those little plastic boxes for ad hoc snack stashes.

Ruth, if you prefer to have ONLY dried fruits, nuts and seeds even when there's not postal strike they are trialling this, they said for me to mark ALL fresh fruit as binned, and this would indicate to them that I wanted the postal strike box all the time. 🙂

Thanks Kav, it will be nice to know how much sugar etc. each dried fruit has. Fruits looks deceptively small when dry, and can give too much sugar in the blood. Nuts and seeds on the other hand sound good in small boxes, like the ones you have.

I took up the 'Graze' offer and to start with it was great fun – like Christmas every week! It's good being able to change the delivery date but this advantage was so often negated by them being delivered late.I suppose like so many 'subscription' services the company relies on the lassitude of the customer not to cancel when they tire of the product. (Luckily my bank card expired so it was done for me!Some great ideas there Kavey. I have taken to filling a small plastic box, originally designed with compartments for different sized screws and nails, with different nibbles on long journeys.I would not have thought of it though without the original 'Graze' experience and your write-up.

As in the review above, “the graze pack weights vary from 25 to 60 grams depending on pack size and contents.” As I explained, “I decide to aim for 50 gram portions for my home-made packs.”
I haven’t purchased any graze boxes lately, so I don’t know if they’ve stopped showing weights on their packs now but certainly when I did this experiment, the packs all had weights printed on them.

[…] I can tell there aren’t really anyone making DIY Graze boxes and then posting about it. I saw one blog post, but he admitted he didn’t really have any appealing combinations, and it seemed to be a one off […]

In my opinion you can’t save money and make your own “graze” style boxes. Sure you can make an alternative as you have shown here but with very limited variations. If you try and really mimic graze and produce daily boxes with things like flavoured nuts, cakes, teas, beef jerky etc you find you are spending quite a fair bit of money. If though you are happy with a few nuts and basic dried fruits (which doesn’t compare to graze) then by all means don’t use graze. Yes I agree graze is expensive (I get 2 boxes a week) but I feel it would cost me more to get comparable items and Im sure I would end up eating more because I have been forced to buy bigger bags etc. At the end of the day if £4 (ish) per box is too much for you then sadly maybe graze isn’t for you.

Thanks. No criticism of the price point is implied here, however I think it’s a valid exercise to discuss the options and look at alternatives. I said in the post itself that the DIY approach will not provide such interesting combinations / flavours as the graze box, so that (and budget) will the decision factors for each potential customer. I still buy the boxes regularly as gifts, but have no problem stating that the current price point is a factor in my not buying regularly for myself.